JPMorgan reaches market manipulation settlement

Updated 4:22 pm, Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Microsoft's long-awaited Windows 8.1 upgrade is available as a free download starting Thursday.

Microsoft's long-awaited Windows 8.1 upgrade is available as a free download starting Thursday.

Photo: Ryan Nakashima, Associated Press

JPMorgan reaches market manipulation settlement

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

BANKING

JPMorgan settles probe

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $100 million and make a groundbreaking admission of wrongdoing to settle an investigation into market manipulation involving the bank's multibillion-dollar trading loss in London, a federal regulator said Wednesday, underscoring how far the bank was willing to go to put the blunder behind it.

The regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, took aim at JPMorgan for trading activity that was so large and voluminous that it violated new rules under the Dodd-Frank Act, the financial regulatory overhaul passed in response to the financial crisis.

LATEST BUSINESS VIDEOS

Is This the End of Candy Hearts? America's 'Oldest' Candy Company Could CloseBuzz 60

Nike to Investigate Workplace Behavior, Announces President will ResignWibbitz

Goodyear Presents New Tire Technology Designed for Electric VehiclesAutomotoTV

This Is The Best Restaurant Chain in AmericaBuzz 60

The First Synthetic Plastic Was RevolutionaryTimeline

President Trump Just Killed Broadcom’s Proposed Takeover of QualcommFortune

The 1950s Single Mom Who Redesigned American Car InteriorsTimeline

Millennial Habits May Soon Bring An End to Passwords New Study ShowsVeuer

The trading commission charged the bank with recklessly "employing a manipulative device" in the market for swaps, financial contracts that allowed the bank to bet on the health of companies like American Airlines. The bank sold "a staggering volume of these swaps in a concentrated period," the trading commission said.

COMPUTING

Windows 8.1 download free

Microsoft is releasing its long-awaited Windows 8.1 upgrade as a free download starting Thursday. It addresses some of the gripes people have had with Windows 8, the dramatically different operating system that attempts to bridge the divide between tablets and PCs.

Windows 8.1 still features the dual worlds that Windows 8 created when it came out last October. On one hand, it features a touch-enabled tile interface resembling what's found in tablet computers. On the other, there's the old desktop mode where the keyboard and mouse still reign.

The update adds some new finger- and gesture-friendly shortcuts for touch-based apps, while restoring some respect for the desktop mode that a billion PC users have become accustomed to. The Window 8.1 update is free for current owners of Windows 8.

BANKING

Report on BofA mortgage help

Bank of America was quicker than its big-bank peers in extending help to delinquent borrowers, as required under a massive legal settlement, but the Charlotte, N.C., bank lagged behind in helping its customers refinance, according to a report released Wednesday.

By the end of 2012, Bank of America was 97 percent of the way through the relief requirements of a $25 billion mortgage settlement it entered into with five large servicers last year. The accord ended investigations into shoddy mortgage-servicing practices like robosigning, or going through large numbers of foreclosure paperwork without reading them.

A series of reports in the past year had shown the amount of mortgage relief banks had self-reported. Wednesday's report is the first look at figures audited and officially credited by the monitor overseeing the settlement.

"What we've seen is that the banks have done what they were required to do," said Joseph Smith, the former North Carolina banking commissioner who oversees the settlement.